


The Seventh Annual SHIELD Friends & Family Picnic

by goodboots



Series: Villain 'Verse [2]
Category: The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: Backstory, Darcy & Loki being codependent bros, Gen, Probably Crack, Superhero Picnic, but what about the iPod?, cartwheeling, just don't tell him that, this got out of hand, warning: reformed Loki
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-08
Updated: 2012-09-08
Packaged: 2017-11-13 17:27:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/505949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodboots/pseuds/goodboots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki's a food thief; Darcy's all about the cartwheels.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Seventh Annual SHIELD Friends & Family Picnic

**Author's Note:**

> After I posted "He Ain't Heavy (He's Our Villain)" I got a couple comments about the superhero picnic and what it would be like, and the first thing I thought of was "Well, obviously Darcy would be doing cartwheels," so I took that idea and ran--er, cartwheeled with it.

Darcy cartwheels.

It's sort of her thing, the cartwheel. She learned when she was four or five--too young to think about boring shit like broken bones or spinal fractures, too young to be afraid--and she was hooked immediately. For most of her adolescence she was liable to spontaneously cartwheel her way out of any situation.

The results varied depending on where she tried it: applause at summer camp, reprimands during math class, raised eyebrows as she tumbled down the aisles at the K-Mart, nonchalant as you can believe. Because she wouldn't wander off or throw a tantrum like a normal kid when her mom or dad or the other kids in class got the better of her; not Darcy Veronica Lewis, no way. She'd calmly turn away and throw herself into a cartwheel, the most perfect way to exit an argument.

She stopped for a bit after Joey Simonson dared her to do one off the end of his backyard diving board in the sixth grade and she cracked her skull open on the pool ledge. That wasn't good, and for about a decade after she was super anti-cartwheel. Then college happened, and alcohol restored a little of her bravery; plus, turns out a cartwheel is a good way to get a guy's attention. Case in point--

"Darce, we talked about this," says Clint, walking across the grass, clutching a hotdog in one hand and two red plastic cups in the other.

She rights herself, smiles and makes gimme hands at the food. "Come on, the kids love it."

"I don't see any kids."

She shrugs. "I'm on break."

"You cartwheeled away from the daycare tent? You couldn't just walk."

"It's not daycare, it's unattended children, and yes, I did, because I know how to make a smooth exit. They should find out young about the best way to travel."

The stripey tent in the middle of the valley kind of _was_ daycare for the kids whose parents were supers, or on the admin team, and wanted to socialise alone; but plenty of them are here on their own, too -- a whole bunch are disadvantaged children from the shelter where Steve volunteers.

The first time they did the picnic, everything was free-range, children running between carnival rides and food stands, and it was picturesque but chaotic. That was seven years ago and they'd since refined the particulars, realising letting a horde of sugar-rushing children run wild amongst superheroes was indeed a bad idea. Hence the divison by ages--Steve's heading up the two-and-unders, because that man loves babies and they love him, and Tony's overseeing the 8-pluses with some help from Maria Hill. There's supposed to be an unattended youth tent too, for teenagers who came alone or the youngster supers, but that place is deserted. Fury's in charge of it, so, no wonder.

"Cartwheels aren't really dress-friendly," Clint notes.

"Shut up," Darcy says through a mouthful of hotdog. "I'm wearing apropes underpants, it's cool."

He flicks up the back of her dress to check, and rather than swat his hand away she lets him get a good look at her butt. Probably he was expecting sexy lace nothings--god, he's such a _guy_ sometimes--because he laughs so hard he snorts at the sight of the red polka dot boy shorts that fully cover her ass.

"Told you," she says, and smoothes down the back of her skirt. "Is that iced tea?"

"Maybe. I was thinking we could find somewhere to sit," he glances back at the picnic in full-swing, the hundreds of normal looking people--SHIELD employees and their families, mostly, but also some subcontractors, regional backup, members of the press--dotted through with superheroes in full regalia.

Darcy personally sent the invitations out to the entire admin team, so most of her babies are milling about somewhere in the crowd, but it's hard to pick out individual faces in the bright sunlight. Every year she means to wear sunglasses, but again, not cartwheel friendly.

"I've only got fifteen minutes, then I go back to relieve Natasha and Bruce." She leans back against the tree, finishes the hotdog in a couple quick bites. Clint dutifully hands her his. "God this is good. Come back with more food in a couple hours?"

He's apparently stuck on the part where Black Widow and Hulk are her backup for the unattended 3-to-7 year olds. "You left them alone with twenty hyper kids?"

"It's more like fifty hyper kids," she corrects, "and Bruce can handle himself."

"It's not Bruce I'd worry about."

She laughs through her sip of iced tea, and oh, sweet Jesus, it isn't the tepid sun-warmed iced tea she remembers from last year's picnic. It's definitely beer, ice-cold and delicious.

"Clint Barton, did you bring me _secret alcohol_?" she asks, dropping into an undertone. She can totally pull off the cool spy-chick look.

"I admit nothing," he says, and takes a long sip from his own red cup.

She's not even going to ask where he got it, because she can guess. It wouldn't be the first time Tony brought a keg to a SHIELD event.

She's starting to say something about that when someone calls her name, and she turns around. It's Janine from accounting, smiling widely, and she's flanked on either side by Todd the lab intern and Loki, their resident villain-turned-interdimensional travel expert. He's making an animated gesture--Loki is something of a hand-talker--when he spots her returned wave and breaks away from them.

He's dressed down today, in expensive jeans and a light blue button down, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, collar open. It's about as casual as Loki ever gets in the summer; wintertime, he slides a little further down the slob-scale, wrapping up in cashmere sweaters and barricading himself and Sif in his Brooklyn apartment for days, until she gets inevitably gets restless and shows up at the Tower to spar with Natasha. He always claims February in New York is too frigid to decently attempt any work, as if they've all forgotten about the Frost Giant Can't Feel The Cold thing.

"Hawkeye," Loki nods, polite.

"Loki," Clint says.

Most of the supers have been calling each other by their public names--makes it easier for the ones with secret identities. Darcy can see Spider-Man leaning against a tent-pole, eating a corndog with his mask rucked up under his nose. He's nodding vigorously at something The Invisible Girl is saying, while a bald man in a wheelchair smiles widely.

The title-only basis is also helpful in awkward situations like this, because Loki'll never be able to call Clint by his first name.

There's tension there, and Darcy knows there always will be, but they're civil about it, for the team's sake. Once Clint characterized it as being for her sake, and she told him to go fuck himself. She expects a lot out of her boyfriend--appearing out of nowhere with surprise beer is definitely going in their wedding vows if they ever make it that far into commitment-land--but she's not going to ask him to be around the psychotic meglomaniac who mind-controlled him, even if said meglomaniac is a little more sane these days, and also possibly her best friend.

Not the point. They're polite, is the point, because Loki now gets that what he did Was Wrong, and Clint gets that sometimes Asgardians are fucking weird.

Being on the same team as Thor probably helps reinforce that point.

Thor's on the other side of the park, near where the face-painters and ballon animal artists have set up their booths. Technically he's the assembly/teardown team for the stands and food huts, but she's willing to bet he and Jane have found their way into the bouncy castle by now. Last picnic half the Avengers ended up in there, including Darcy, which might be why she's been assigned childminding duty this year. Coulson was _pissed_.

"I thought you weren't coming this year," she says, by way of greeting.

Loki rolls his eyes. "I did _try_ to book today off."

"Did you really try?"

"It's in the calendar," he insists. "I used the red pen."

"No dice," Darcy says, radiating sympathy or mockery or something, she hasn't decided. "Well, there's always next year."

He doesn't bother responding to that, just turns and addresses Clint instead:

"I've actually just come from the stage; Agent Coulson would like to speak with you," he says, and does a good job of making it sound like Clint's not in trouble even though he totally is.

Coulson treats Clint like his second-in-command most of the time, and holds him to a higher standard than the rest of them. Clint doesn't mind, only smiles kind of enigmatically and makes the occasional reference to the time back when Coulson was his specific handler rather than the team babysitter. Darcy doesn't know precisely what went down there. Coulson got married last year to a very attractive dude, and Clint's definitely into girls--she's proved this in a variety of positions and locations--but she's heard the speculation that before the Clint and Natasha Debacle, itself a part of that nebulous pre-Avengers time, there might have been a Clint and Coulson Debacle.

Figures she'd end up falling in love with the SHIELD bicycle.

He presses a kiss against her temple, says, "I hope he didn't find out about the keg," and starts off down the hill toward the mainstage tent, where in t-minus ninety minutes there will be a talent show. All the Avengers except Bruce have got themselves banned from participating due to previous years' catastrophes, but it's worth going just to see his chainsaw juggling.

Darcy, seeing that half her lunch break is still sitting in the bank, lolls against the tree-trunk and sips her beer.

"How many pounds of sunscreen did you put on before you ventured into the sun today, Mr Pasty?" she asks Loki.

"Three applications, and a fair bit of magic," he replies, not at all ashamed.

The way he says magic has an edge to it, like he's making a point, and she's got a guess what it is. Loki always has his magic, even though Odin took away the darker parts of it, sealed off his superhuman strength. He's effectively human except for the immortality and a handful of really good party tricks, and the best of those tricks is the way he can make people see what isn't there.

"You're not--?" she gestures to her own face, makes a swirly motion with her hand.

Darcy honestly never knows if he's wearing the disguise or not. She doesn't see the false face, only his actual smirking one. Thor explained once that Loki's magic has a shelf life, that after prolonged exposure you can develop an immunity, and it looks like Darcy's reached that point.

"You can tell?"

"No, but Jane said you were thinking of leaving the glamour at home now that the Times has blown your cover."

His mouth quirks into a one-sided smile. "Don't tell anyone. They all treat me so much better if they can pretend they don't know who I am."

That's the sort of melodramatic bullshit he always says about the glamours or lack-thereof, but it's actually totally untrue now. In the six months since his _Good Morning, America_ appearance--stuttery and sleep-deprived, and not at all his usual charisma-oozing self--he's settled well into the position of reluctant media darling. Nothing like a reformed villain, helping the good guys from behind the scenes, squiring his lady around town. Speaking of--

"Where's your warrior woman today?"

"Keeping Stark away from the unpleasant fellow with the claws."

"Aww, Wolverine's not so bad. He was great to have around when we couldn't get the crate full of condiments open."

He quirks a brow. "The man serves the same function as a boxcutter, and you consider this a redeeming quality?"

"I know you've seen Edward Scissorhands, so don't give me that sass," which is a phrase she heard Agent Hill spout at a snarky pre-teen half an hour ago. Darcy likes it and intends to keep it. Sass.

He responds by stealing her hotdog and taking a too-big bite.

Loki's weird about personal space, about germs and viruses. He rarely shakes hands, makes a put-upon face when he has to stand near strangers in an elevator or the subway (oh, how he hates the subway). Keeps a box of Bic pens on his desk in the lab and hands them out like candy, specifically so people will all have their own pens and never have to touch his fine-tip set that cost a bajillion dollars or whatever it was. Fury and Stark and most of the others chalk it up to his alienness, but Darcy's pretty sure he's just prissy.

There are exceptions to that, of course, and Darcy's food has long been one of them.

"You're always taking my stuff," she whines, which, yes, sounds really similar to the debate she arbitrated twenty minutes ago between two five year olds over a Hulk popsicle (sour apple flavour). She knows and doesn't care, because he's _always taking her stuff_.

He takes another bite of hotdog, unrepetant under her glare.

"Oh," he says, when he's finished chewing. He reaches into his shirt pocket. "I nearly forgot. Here," he passes over a--

Really.

_Really?_

It's a small, pink metal rectangle with rounded edges, tarnished and discoloured. There's a Hello Kitty sticker peeling off the back of it, and the headphones that went with it are missing but the clickwheel still works. She scrolls through _science jams for Jane_ and _what is physics_ and yep, those are her playlists. This is definitely her long-missing iPod, confiscated by SHIELD during the original Thor situation.

She's experiencing a sudden mad rush of nostalgia for her seven-years-outdated musical taste. There's a surprising amount of Snoop Dog on here. Huh.

"Mother _fucker_ ," she breathes out. "You had it the whole time?"

He's not paying attention, because he's spotted Sif lingering near the cotton candy cart and is waving her over. "I did not even realise I had it in my possession until this morning. It was in my apartment--"

"I _helped you move into that apartment._ We did the IKEA thing. Oh my god, you're not reformed at all, are you? You're just an evil iPod thief."

"Reformed," he scoffs, reaching for her plastic cup. "I never claimed any such thing." But he does look kind of--guilty? What? "I honestly had no idea  you valued it so highly, or else I would have sought it out for you beforehand, as a favour for your loyalty."

Sometimes she's not sure he ever stopped thinking of her as a potential minion; then again, she's technically his boss, so. Probably it all evens out.

He takes a long sip of the not-iced tea, apparently uncaring that it's contraband, and hands her back the near-empty cup.

"I do not forgive you, and you now owe me alcohol."

"What's happened?" asks Sif, appearing at Loki's side. She's wearing a white cotton sundress and holding a cloud of cotton candy on a stick, and next to him they look like the world's most harmless couple, like they were clipped out of a J. Crew catalogue.

"Your husband is a jerkass," Darcy says, which is true but not much of an answer.

"Can you be more specific?" Sif replies. Loki jabs her in the side with a finger, she swats him away.

"He stole my iPod and held it hostage for seven years," she says vehemently. Maybe she sounds a little murderous, but come on, it's her iPod.

Sif and Clint share a look--oh, hey, Clint's back!--that clearly says, oh, dear, our signficant others are insane.

"Her music player," Loki clarifies for Sif. "Apparently there's a significant emotional attachment to a severely outdated piece of technology," which, hey, is not even kind of fair. Just because some people have to have the new iPhone or StarkPad the instant it's released doesn't mean they've got better taste. Darcy appreciates the classics, and little pink click-wheel of the Hello Kitty sticker is a classic.

"Where did you even find it? I lost it in New Mexico."

"It was in the vegetable crisper," he says, then tells Sif: "Your practice broadsword was in there was well. I think we ought to look in to that."

This is just more evidence that he's pulled some kind of magic voodoo on his fridge, but Darcy suspected that anyway.

Her watch beeps.

"Crap," she says, and drains the rest of Clint's beer. It's a testament to their relationship that he doesn't even blink. "I've gotta get back to the Under 7s."

"You're minding the enclosed children?" asks Sif, a little nervously. Why do they all say it like that? It might be a shitty assignment from Coulson but Darcy is _great_ with kids. She's been thinking some of them might be ready to move on to backflips.

"And my time's up," she affirms. "Clint, my darling, please come by the tent with a corndog in forty-five minutes."

"Aye-aye," he says, with a salute.

She pecks him on the cheek. "Good man. Sif, lovely to see you, as usual. If you get bored hanging around with Mr. Ipod Stealer, I bet Pepper and Mister Fantastic could use a hand with the talent show setup."

Sif looks like she thinks the chances of that happening are pretty low. Darcy kind of loves Sif, for all the girl is a mystery to her; she gives absolutely nothing away. It took them all fucking years to figure out her apparentl indifference to Loki was actually affection. Probably by the end of night she'll have ended up inthe bouncy castle with the rest of them, and dragged him in too.

Darcy turns to address him. "Bowie, don't imagine that this is over," she tries to sound menacing but might be overdoing it, because Clint's started laughing. "We'll resume talking about how you're going to make up for this greivous offence after the fireworks display. Admin is assembling in the northwest corner at ten o'clock, you better be there."

He looks skeptical. "Why would I attend the traditional post-picnic intoxication if I know you're planning some horrible punishment for me?"

"I have no idea. Think of a reason, you can tell me at the bar."

Sif's started laughing too.

Loki grits his teeth. "I'm not going to the bar unless you drop this ridiculous accusation--"

"--I can't hear you, I'm on a roll," she says. That was her default exit line during the K-Mart tantrums as well. She raises her hands over her head and throws her body sideways, down the hill, toward the daycare tent.

"What--" Loki starts.

Clint holds up a hand. "Just go with it," he advises, grinning, and they watch her spin away.

You can tell a man is a keeper when he loves your inappropriately timed cartwheels.

**Author's Note:**

> This was actually meant to be a mindless bit of fluff and feature dozens of Marvel characters, but, um, it turns out I actually don't know very much about the wider Marvel universe? So instead it turned out all about Darcy and Loki's bizarro friendship. I have no fucks to give.
> 
> Thanks so much for reading!


End file.
